Circlet’s Fantastic Erotica is out now and I’m in it

To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Circlet Press, Fantastic Erotica presents the very best erotic science fiction and fantasy short stories published by Circlet in the past five years. Chosen by popular vote by the readership from among all the stories published by Circlet from 2008 to the present, these favorites are the cream of the crop.

A winner and two runners-up were chosen. N.K. Jemisin’s “The Dancer’s War” shows us the sensuous magic not of a stock fantasy medieval Europe, but of an Africa that never was. Bernie Mojzes “Ink” combines H.P. Lovecraft and Raymond Chandler into a surprisingly soulful story of sexual transformation. And our winner, “Ota Discovers Fire,” by Vinnie Tesla pokes gentle fun at all the traipsing into exotic lands depicted in fantasy quests. Sometimes the traveler you meet on the road is nothing like what you expect.

“The best of [these stories] fully integrate sex with SF/Fantasy and provide erotic heat… it’s imaginative and a cut above most such offerings.”
—Publishers Weekly

What’s fantastic about stuff from Circlet, as I’ve always said, is how it’s reliably great SF in addition to being reliably great porn. You can come for either and stay for the other and either way you’ll probably leave very satisfied.

My story, “Catch and Release”, is an SFnal retelling of retelling of the 1001 Nights story “The Fisherman and the Jinni”. Here’s what I said about it here when it was first released in Like a Veil:

It’s a very rough retelling, adopting more the spirit of the story than sticking close to the original plot, and at first I wasn’t entirely sure how to approach it. But I drew some parallels in my mind between djinn imprisoned in lamps and strange, powerful alien entities imprisoned in drifting capsules, and taking the story and giving it a scifi bent seemed like an interesting way of going after it. The story itself turned into something of a fable regarding wanting to belong while at the same time rebelling against the things that threaten to tie you down to the merely conventional. The setting of a rebuilt, futuristic Baghdad, constantly in the background, served as a nice focal point for these two warring strands of past and future, the impossibly ancient and the profoundly new.

I also love the idea of Suleiman drifting in the solar winds, picking up all the trash that our space-faring descendants would doubtlessly generate. It’s an image that’s stuck with me long after the story was done.

Read an excerpt, if you want. And of course it goes without saying that the book is worth checking out regardless of me. Seriously, look at that lineup goddamn